In July of 1972 we had a fire at our house here in Illinois. Everything was lost but I think the biggest losses was my bothers and mine coin albums. Growing up in the late 60's early 70's we had coin books that were filled from circulation. As I remember it we had a fairly full benjaminhalf collection, but the big collection was the liberty quarters and halves. after the fire all we found was 2 big balls of silver. melt minus 4 X.
Could have been worse My ancestors tended to live near rivers. Lots of the passed on coins have been under water, but they are still Old Coins. Thank goodness you didn't collect bills. At least you still have 2 big silver balls! Now lets hear from the plains states......"My collections not in Kansas anymore"
Bummer Sorry about your loosing the collections, but it was almost 40 yrs ago. Sounds like your cat/dog/family/you got out ok, tho. That good. You did post this at about 2 am? so it sounds like you are still losing sleep over this. PLUS~What would those two big silver balls look like if they had been slabbed?:bigeyes:
My kiddie coin collection survived a fire. They were all smoke damaged when retrieved. I left them in the book, put it away for 50 years. Reopened it for the first time a few months ago and lo and behold some of the finest toners you could ever want. That is making lemonade out of a lemon. Traci
Brings back memories of my 1997 fire in my apartment. Not too much damage as far as the coins went, just my one per county Conder collection. Not melted but badly scorched including of a dozen mint state pieces and a handful of 18th century proofs. What hurt more though was my library. Had roughly 1000 items in the library and they were in the room the fire was in. The fire was small though and once it was out I was able to look in through the windows and see my library still sitting on the shelves apparently in good condition! Then the firemen came back in, threw all the books, magazines, auction catalogs etc out of the bookshelves onto the floor, soaked them down with water, walked around on them for awhile, pulled the ceiling down on them, soaked them again, and then finally walked around on them again for awhile. Only a few of the books were actually fire damaged, almost all the destruction was caused by the firemen. (Then after they left I went in and finished extinguishing the fire which was still burning.)
Volunteer firefighters? Get what you pay for. Traci Sorry man, its **** poor for any firefighter to leave before the fire is OUT.
